Hematite (RARE locality specimen)

Item Description

This is a fantastic Hematite from a rare locality, the McComber Mine (Lucy Mine on the George's label) in Marquette County, Michigan. Not only is this a remarkable rarity, but it's also a beautiful and fine quality Hematite to boot! This gorgeous small cabinet is filled with wonderful botryoidal aggregates of grey-black Hematite measuring up to about 9 mm across, with a pleasing velvety luster on the surface, sitting on reddish-brown massive Hematite matrix. The piece is in amazingly good condition, with no major damage I can see on the display. It's the best Hematite we've ever had to offer from this locality, which is because as far as I can recall, it's the only one we've had to offer, but it's really choice quality, and would make a superb addition to any Hematite suite or a collection of minerals of Michigan. One of the labels mentions that this piece is "kidney ore", and I don't entirely agree as you really need that deep burnt reddish hue to get the full effect of "kidney ore", I just think it's a really wonderful Hematite and doesn't even need any additional descriptors to convey the quality. The piece came to George from Joe Dague, but way of John Betts and Dr. William Tatu, a pathologist from Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. The Betts label places the piece as coming from and "old collection ca 1890". It's impossible to ascertain fair market value on such a delightful Hematite specimen from an obscure locality, but I can promise you're not likely to find another like it anywhere else on the market, so don't miss out.
Ex George Loud Collection No. 4415 MI.1; 9596 George (born August 16, 1942) is a well-known mineral collector from Washington, DC and South Carolina respectively, and was a patent lawyer by trade for over 50 years. He assembled one of the great mineral collections in the U.S., comprising worldwide specimens, and in later years he sold the worldwide specimens to focus on minerals of the United States, specifically locality suites with an emphasis on amazing representation of species while still maintaining fine quality. The specimens remarkably range from micros to all the way up to large cabinets in size. We recently acquired most of his impressive 9000+ piece collection, and the VAST majority of these pieces will be offered here in the auctions, as we feel that everyone deserves and equal opportunity at acquiring these important, well-documented and fine quality specimens for their collections.
See: https://mineralogicalrecord.com/biographies_labels/george-loud for more information